Overview The SDSU-UCSD partnership for increasing investigators who come from groups with health disparities stems from a four year partnership within the San Diego EXPORT Center, in which students along the biomedical pipeline as well as young investigators and medical students, received training in cultural competency in the classroom and in sites where cardiovascular disparities where being studies (ie. laboratory, community health centers). This partnership resulted in an established training program including a seminar in health disparities topics and a practice-based internship at the SYHC. The Training Core at SDSU-UCSD has been successful at providing mentoring and research training for community health center physicians, minority undergraduate and graduate students, high school students, community health workers (CHWs) and other health professionals in community settings. The goal of the proposed Training Core is to strengthen the research training program, allowing opportunities for minority investigators to conduct cutting edge research in the area of cardiovascular disparities and maximize their impact in the San Diego Latino community. The goal of the research training core is to provide all Partnership (SYHC, SDSU and UCSD) investigators, staff and institutions reciprocal educational and skills development activities that will initially reduce disparities in the local target community and later through dissemination to community health centers and Latino communities in the U.S.. The main goal of the research training core will be to integrate the participation of new investigators to increase efforts in reducing urgent disparities in the San Diego Latino community through the Research Core. The ability of new investigators to impact the community as measured by short-term outcomes in an intervention study of cardiovascular disease (i.e. changes in CIMT, improved CVD risk factor profile, and patient satisfaction) will be the focus of research training activities. .Success will also be measured by the number of new and young Latino and minority investigators conducting research in this setting as part of the Partnership, non-minority researchers that become interested in collaborating and receiving mentoring, and the number of established investigators that are drawn to conduct research in Partnership efforts. Efforts will also incorporate the participation of minority students at SDSU and UCSD at the undergraduate and graduate level in cardiovascular disparities research within the research core, serving as a pipeline to careers in biomedical research.